Medicine

Clear cell sarcoma of the tendons and aponeuroses (CCSTA) is an aggressive, rare soft-tissue tumor representing approximately 1 per cent of all soft tissue sarcomas. Although it appears to be histogenetically related to melanoma, its clinical behavior resembles soft tissue sarcoma with a propensity for lymph node metastases. We report our experience at a tertiary referral center. Eight cases of CCSTA evaluated at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Medical Center between 1980 and 2002 were retrospectively reviewed. Patient data analyzed included age, gender, anatomic location, size of tumor, development of local, regional, and distant recurrence, and patient status at last follow-up. Local recurrence did not develop in any patient. Metastases developed in three patients with median time to presentation of metastases of 23 months (range, 8-36 months) from the time of initial diagnosis. Two of these three patients died of their disease with an average interval until death of 2...

Both end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and urothelial cancer (UC) are associated with the consumption of Chinese herbal products containing aristolochic acid (AA) by the general population. The objective of this study was to determine the risk of UC associated with AA-related Chinese herbal products among ESRD patients. We conducted a cohort study using the National Health Insurance reimbursement database to enroll all ESRD patients in Taiwan from 1998-2002. Cox regression models were constructed and hazard ratios and confidence intervals were estimated after controlling for potential confounders, including age, sex, residence in region with endemic black foot disease, urinary tract infection, and use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and acetaminophen. A total of 38,995 ESRD patients were included in the final analysis, and 320 patients developed UC after ESRD. Having been prescribed Mu Tong that was adulterated with Guan Mu Tong (Aristolochia manshuriensis) before 2004, or an ...

The journal impact factor is increasingly employed to evaluate the quality of scientific research. This is in contrary to its critical limitations, e.g., its marked variation across scientific disciplines. This study was conducted to describe, in both quantitative and qualitative terms, the contribution of Iranian universities and research institutes to biomedical publications in 2004 and to examine the possible effect of impact factor normalization by subject on their rankings. The Iranian biomedical articles were recruited from Thomson Science Citation Index Expanded and PubMed databases according to Thomson Scientific subject categorization of journals. Three subject-normalized impact factors were employed: rank-normalized impact factor, journal to field impact score, and standardized impact factor. Tehran and Shiraz Universities of Medical Sciences and University of Tehran were the top three institutes regarding the sum of impact factor in 2004. On the basis of the mean crude im...